2021 was supposed to be the year where everything that was broken fixed itself. It was supposed to be the end of COVID, the end of ugly surprises, the end of good things postponed. Instead, for me, it was the year of waiting. While I waited for editors to read my debut novel, I had to discover why I even write at all, and I had to reimagine what it means to be a successful author.
The year was riddled with far more failures than acceptances. 32 rejections to be exact, and 9 acceptances. Honestly, I'm glad to see the back of 2021, even though, in the end, it gave me quite a lot to celebrate -- and reminded me that the joy of writing has actually very little to do with 'success'.
My writing didn't find very many new homes in the latter half of 2021, though even just a few new publications are worth celebrating!
Just in time for Halloween, two flash stories of mine were published online at Stone of Madness Press. Read 'Beneath the aspen tree' and 'Bluidy Fingers' in Issue Fifteen.
And just before 2021 slips away, I received the news that my paper 'Taking the Gothic Outside and Onto the Coast: Defining the Seaside Gothic in British Fiction ' will be included in the programme for the Once and Future Fantasies Conference held in Glasgow next summer.
Thanks for reading!
Angie Spoto is an American fiction writer and poet living in Edinburgh. In 2020, she completed a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow. Her doctoral thesis was a fantasy novel, called The Grief Nurse, and a collection of essays on grief, madness and language. The Grief Nurse has been shortlisted for the First Novel Prize 2021 and The Bridge Awards Emerging Writer Award in 2020. Angie is represented by Robbie Guillory from Underline Literary Agency.